Walking Her Down
by Maeve Epans
Summary: Walking her down the aisle would have been my proudest moment of my life... [Draco/OC]
1. My Daughter

Walking her down the aisle would have been my proudest moment of my life. Today would have been the day that I give her away to the one man she has always been in love with.

My seventeen year old daughter had fought bravely in the war alongside her friends then was proposed to by her eighteen year old boyfriend of nearly three years right after the war had ended. He did not have a ring like was custom by the purebloods when proposing, but it had been a spur of the moment kind of thing. He had realized how close he had come to losing her and everything he held dear, and he wanted to keep her safe from now on. Though, at the time of proposal, he was seventeen and she was sixteen. If this had been any other boy, or different circumstances, I would have said no, but they knew each since birth, technically speaking, and they went to Hogwarts together in the same house and year. They went through many hardships and came out on top with the help of each other. I felt safe and insured that my daughter's safety and heart would be protected by the man she was in love with and getting married to today.

The Malfoys would take good care of my Maeve. Draco would be an excellent son-in-law to me and an even better husband to my little girl. They were financially secure, not that Maeve cared about money. Merlin knew she had a bunch of money from her grandfather, mother, and I, and she rarely used it unless for school or friends. She would be in a great manor, not the same one that Lucius and Narcissa lived in nor the one her mother and I had lived in during our brief marriage before her untimely death. The two young ones had full ownership of that particular manor after what happened during the war. My soon to be in-laws would have already had a beautiful large manor built for the two lovebirds. But, once again, not something my little Maeve would care about.

No, my Maeve only cared about love right now, as well she should be. She was just like me. Once in love with one person, they are always on your mind no matter what and they have your heart. Though, with her, she is not marrying her best friend because she is in love with another who does not love her back. Her best friend is in love with her as she is in love with him. I watched her passion for him blossom into the beautiful flower it is today. I also had first row seats to Draco's growing desire for her through the years. Those two were in love with each other, and no one, not even Voldemort if he had still been alive, could deny it. Nothing could separate those two.

I was a bit jealous of my daughter's love. Hers was returned at full forced. Yes, my wife loved me when she was alive and I loved her, but my wife knew I would always be in love with my first love. It did not seem to bother her at all, she accepted it and I could not help but to feel as though I were betraying her as my love betrayed me after that fateful afternoon. I was happy for my daughter, though. She would not have to suffer through heartbreak as I did. I am sure she went through enough heartbreak this past year, with camping out all over England with Potter, Granger, and Weasley, not knowing if the young Malfoy boy was still alive or not, and I did not want her to suffer anymore of that. What father would wish that on his own daughter?

Contemplating the whole last year, I wondered how my daughter would cope with all the losses she had undergone. She had lost many people that were dear to her in the war. The Malfoy boy would help her through her hardships, but Maeve was like me sometimes. She would not show her heartbreak all the time, and hide it, like her father. I could only hope that after years of being best friends and lovers would cause Draco to see if anything was wrong that she was not showing.

There was laughter coming in through the windows along with the light breeze and sunshine. I looked out the window to the best of my abilities to see who all was here. Now, from this viewpoint, anyone could only see little people as small as ants, but there was no denying the largest group of red heads to be the Weasley family. All the others, one could only presume who they were. I could not see it, but I knew they were smiling and some in tears. My daughter had insisted on having the wedding near the grave markers of all the fallen from the war. She just smiled saying she wanted all of her friends to be present at the wedding and it would be no fun without them. She got that from her mother. Her outgoing personality caused her to be popular among people in Hogwarts, staff and student alike, yet she was still quiet and reserved like I was.

"Such a beautiful wedding."

I turned my head to face the portrait I knew spoke. Albus Dumbledore just smiled his same age old smile, those blue eyes still sparkling as if he were still alive and not just a painting. He was staring out the window with me, watching all the people mingle and wait for the ceremony to start. I did not say anything to the old headmaster, knowing he would speak more.

"My daughter's daughter is such a wedding planner." he chuckled. "This place was in ruins not even three months ago, and now it is fit for a wedding to take place." He turned his head to face me. "You must be a proud father, as I am a proud grandfather. Such a sweet girl for wanting to invite everyone to her wedding, including the dead."

"Yes." was all I could say. He was right. She was a sweet girl. I could not believe she was my daughter. She has more of her mother in her and she never even met the woman.

The wedding was set and ready to go from the looks of it. All that was missing was the bridal party and the beautiful woman who I should be walking down the aisle. I should be giving her away to Draco. I should be sitting right in front, watching my daughter smile and listening to her vows. But I could not.

The sound of quick footsteps broke me out of my thoughts and I turned towards the door. The stairs leading to the headmaster's office were moving, but not fast enough for the owner in the heels running up them apparently. I heard Dumbledore's portrait chuckle.

"Just like you." was all he said. I assumed he was looking at the door as well, for I would not turn my eyes away from the entrance as it opened. When the door was against the wall completely, the entrance way to the office held a beautiful vision of white.

"Daddy?"


	2. His Girl

It seemed like just yesterday Emerald was running out to greet me as I walked up the stoneway to our manor. She looked so beautiful with her long dark red hair flowing behind her and her yellow sundress against her body with the wind. Her small form jumped into my open arms and I held her there, kissing her sweet lips, a smile on my face. Then my smile turning to disbelief when her melodious voice laughed out that they were pregnant. I was going to be a father to a child.

Months later, we found that the child would be a tiny girl. A tiny, bouncing baby girl. While we decorating one of the guest rooms light pink, transforming it into the nursery, I was terrified about caring for a tiny being smaller than the size of my forearm. What if she slipped out of my grasp? What if she grew up hating me as I hated my own father? What if she grew up just to be just like me?

My wife would just smile each time I fretted over those thoughts and brought them to her attention. I noticed she would never worry about our soon to be born girl. All she would say when I asked her if she was terrified as I was, was that I would be a wonderful father. It was just a few weeks later, a mere week before our daughter would be born, that I found out why she never was worried. The first thing I learned about Emerald when I first met her was that she was a promising Seer, even at the young age of eleven. Her visions had never once failed her all her life.

But just this once, I had wished with all my might that she would be wrong about this.

Emerald didn't even fret over that she was not going to be able to help raise our baby. She had foreseen her own death during childbirth and had come to accept it. I would have to bring up a tiny human all by myself. A tiny human girl that I helped create, when the woman who would give birth to her would die and leave me alone. For days, I was blaming myself for this. If I hadn't have impregnated her, she would still be here. Not even a year ago had I lost my best friend who I had been in love with since childhood, and Merlin was taking away my wife as soon as we were to be parents.

It pained me to hold our baby girl as Emerald lied there on the bed, the ghost of a smile still gracing her beautiful, paling face. The girl had been born looking just like me, with the exception of her bright blue eyes and soft nose...and the few red strands of hair mixed in with her night sky hair. I named her after her mother. Thus Maeve Emerald was my daughter's name.

But once more, Merlin took my only love left away from me in a form of Voldemort on her third birthday. At the thought of losing my daughter just three years after losing her mother and four years after losing my best friend, I lost all my thoughts and banished the disgusting form from my manor. Dumbledore had pronounced that my little Maeve was still alive, just poisoned and had what little memories she had possessed over her short time alive erased. He had thought that to keep her safe was to take her away from me and the magical world until he deemed his only grandchild able to attend Hogwarts.

Fate had not been kind to me.

All those years of not being able to see my baby girl had turned me into a cruel and heartless man. Seven years I had to go without raising the only thing I had left of my wife, yet even after, I could not bring myself to introduce myself as her father. When I first saw her enter the Great Hall when she was just ten years old, I was shocked. She was such a happy girl. A bouncy girl with an amazing personality and I couldn't believe that this child was my own daughter. Later that night, Dumbledore pulled me into his office to remind me about the poison that was flowing through her system as we spoke. It was the only thing that made Dumbledore bring her in a year earlier than the others. She would barely make it past her seventh year before the poison would take her life.

I didn't want to lose her after only just getting her back. My thoughts raced before coming to my conclusion. I couldn't bring myself to tell her I was her father. I didn't want to go through all the pain of losing a third woman who meant the world to me. I would act as if she was just any other student, not my own daughter, and distance myself from her. That way when the time came for her death, I wouldn't be affected by it any more than any other staff member.

But then I saw her in my class in her Slytherin uniform. I heard her answer my questions that Potter could not answer himself. There was no way I could avoid her. Her brilliant blue eyes would always be intently focused on her potions or essay that I would assign, and she would be the first one completed every time. It was as if she had been screaming for attention and approval from me without knowing it. Maeve didn't know who her father was, but she had been getting help from Dumbledore and had quickly realized it was a staff member.

When her name came out of the goblet with Potter's name in her fourth year, I was terrified. The poison in her body had quickly sped up with her active in Quidditch and breaking a bone each year. She would have been luck to make it out of her fourth year alive, and Dumbledore had told her she would not be back for her fifth. I had still not revealed myself, but when he spoke to me of that, I could not help but want to cry. I was trying to distance myself from the small girl, yet I was not ready to watch her die. I knew then that I would never be ready to see that happen. She was my daughter no matter what I did.

Within days of her arrival during fourth year and the goblet incident, Maeve figured out that I was her father. I denied it up front, still trying to distance myself from the inevitable, but Dumbledore kept pushing her at me until I finally cracked and gave in. I had never held nor watched a girl sleep as long as I held my daughter that night. My daughter was back where she belonged, but within months she would be taken away from me and would sleep in the ground.

The time came, of course, at the end of the year. During the Diggory boy's memorial, Draco Malfoy had started yelling for help. My daughter had passed out in his arms and would not wake up. Pomfrey attempted to be the first one over to her, but I would not allow that. I quickly scooped my daughter's seemingly lifeless body out of Malfoy's crying form and ran to the Hospital Wing, Pomfrey, Dumbledore, Potter, the Weasley boys, Granger, and Malfoy quick behind me. Dumbledore had forced the other students to say their goodbyes and leave Hogwarts grounds as their friend and girlfriend was dying in the Wing. When I saw their tears, I couldn't bring myself to just sit by my daughter's side and watch her die. Each night there was a gut-wrenching scream that would have made even Voldemort cry. So each night and every day, I was in my classroom, creating an antidote I could only hope would work.

Months later, my beautiful daughter had walked down the stairs of our manor on the arms of Goyle and Crabbe down into a shocked Malfoy's arms and an even more surprised group of friends and people. I was proud of her. She had fought her battle brilliantly and with the help of my antidote, she had came back at a full recovery. Which was amazing and very much needed to win the war.

If only I could have been there at the end to watch the seventeen year old Malfoy scoop my sixteen year old baby girl into his arms and propose. But I hadn't been.


	3. Her Child

"Daddy?"

The melodious voice of my daughter filled the small room once more calling for me. I was stunned to silence for the first time in a long time by the vision of beauty that stood in front of the old headmaster's desk that now belonged to Minevra. Her midnight hair up in loose curls that surely he redheaded Molly did the non-magical way while the blonde Narcissa worked the natural looking makeup onto her face. She was a spitting image of a female version of myself, aside from her eyes, which were her mother's ocean blue, and nose, a softly rounded little thing that made my daughter perfect.

"Alas, your father is at a loss for words, as I am, darling little one." Dumbledore's response was followed by a chorus of agreements from the other old headmasters of Hogwarts, aside from me, still taking in her beauty and still at a shock what a stunning creature my wife and I had created. How can someone so happy and beautiful come from me? How had I not messed her up in the short time I had with her?

Those big blue eyes held the smile her lips were missing. She adored the compliments people gave her, though she wasn't one to gloat or allow her ego to grow at them. She took them in stride and grace, like her mother. My Maeve was so much like my deceased wife, I couldn't help but to smile down at her. She would not show her smile until I did. Once she returned my smile with her own, I was still reminded of my wife. The smile that could light up a room of even the most depressed Death Eaters. No one was safe from that smile. Had Emerald been alive to show her how to use that, I had my doubts there was anything that Draco could refuse her. Not that he could now, so he should feel grateful about that.

My words were still jumbled in my thoughts as I stared down at my daughter. How I wish I could be down there now, holding her in my arms and telling her that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Giving her reassurance that her father will always love her no matter how many years she is or whether she is married or not. She will always be my little girl. The little girl I wish I had the chance to push on the swings. The little girl I wish I could have taught to dance on my feet. The little girl I wish I could have taught to ride her first broom. The little girl I wish I had the chance to raise.

Now here she was, awaiting my approval of her dress, her makeup, her hair, her everything. She didn't have to vocalize why she was here. She did want approval of those things, among others as well. Such as her choice of husband, of friends, and of the fact she was wanting to move on as long as I would still be here for her. She wanted approval that she was allowed to move on after weeks of mourning the loss of her friends and myself. We had only just gotten each other back and I was ripped from her life as quickly as she had gotten me. She just wanted to know if I felt it was okay for her to move on. To which, I did.

No one should have to watch the blood pour out of her own father's body as he died in her arms. No one should spend weeks holed up in an old tattered shack where she watched him die, mourning. No one should have to plan her wedding while tears are streaming down her face because her father would not be walking her down the aisle like she had wanted from the moment of finding out he was still alive and out there. She had locked herself in that room of the Shrieking Shack where I had died in her arms, asking questions about her wedding through sobs to a ghost that was never there and would never respond.

It had taken the Malfoy boy each and every day of Maeve's mourning to get her to stop shutting him out and let him back in. She had felt terrible for closing him out for so long before their wedding, but he had been so understanding and I was proud of him for being that kind with my daughter's situation. He had even offered to postpone the wedding date to a later time so that she could mourn a little more, but Maeve had refused and said that everyone needed something happy to shine light on such a sad and dark time that had passed. She had planned from the beginning that their wedding location would be Hogwarts, so that the dead may attend and be a part of their happiness. To show that their sacrifices had not been in vain and they would always be missed.

Once again, like my wife. Emerald's kindness for the dead has shown through strongly in our daughter. Emerald had always had a special spot for the ghosts of Hogwarts, always befriending the most of them, including the Bloody Baron and even Peeves, two ghosts of which Maeve had also befriended within weeks of starting Hogwarts seven years ago. Emerald was most likely smiling down at our daughter for having her wedding near the gravestones of so many of her deceased friends.

Coming back to my daughter, I turned my attention back to her fully. She had been quiet, allowing me to think and form a reasonable response to everything she wanted an answer to without questioning it verbally. When I opened my mouth to speak, I couldn't think of anything better to say than, "You are your mother's child."

The grin that appeared on her face was magical and the tears that erupted from her eyes were of pure happiness. That must have been what she wanted to hear, or at least something close to it. I couldn't help but to just stare at her and still see my wife. Seeing my daughter in a wedding dress so young reminded me of Emerald in her wedding dress mere days after our graduation from Hogwarts. I thought it was reckless to get married so young, but somehow Emerald had talked me into it. This time, though, it was both of their ideas and I could not think that this was the best choice for my daughter. After all she's been through, she deserves to be happy and this was what would make her happiest.

But she surprised me with her next sentences. "I'm your daughter, too, Daddy. I always will be your daughter."

I had only cried this hard when my wife died, my best friend died, when my daughter was taken away from me, and lastly when I thought I had lost my daughter a few years ago. The tears just started flowing and a sob escaped my throat.

Maeve waved her wand that had been in her hand at a chair and transfigured it into a ladder just tall enough for her to climb up to the height of the paintings. I watched as she grew nearer to Dumbledore and I. First she gave a kiss to Dumbledore's portrait. "Thank you, Grandpa, for everything." Dumbledore said nothing, but smiled and nodded at her. Then she turned to me. She placed one of her small hands on my portrait and quietly said, "I will always love you, Daddy. I miss you so much. I promise to make you proud."

As she kissed my portrait and started down the ladder, I replied, "You already have. I am the proudest father in the world because I have you as my daughter and I wouldn't change anything."

Another tear escaped her eyes as she transfigured the ladder back into a chair and placed it in its proper place. As she headed to the doors, Maeve turned back around and said, "I'll be the second best potions master this school has ever seen. Right after my father, who's made me the proudest daughter in the world. I wouldn't change anything for the world. I love you as my father." With that, my daughter walked out of the office, down the moving staircase, and out to the wedding site.

As the music started playing, I looked out the window and watched her start her descent down the aisle. "Now, isn't this such a beautiful wedding for such a beautiful girl?" Dumbledore asked as he watched his only grandchild walk towards the man of her future.

I smiled and nodded at my father-in-law. "She's a Dumbledore, through and through."

"I'm afraid you have that all wrong." At this, I turned my head towards the older man in inquiry. His bubbly grin was facing the wedding still. "She's a Snape, through and through, she is."

I turned my attention back to my daughter's wedding. She was being walked down by her future father-in-law. Lucius Malfoy couldn't look any prouder as he handed her to his only son and took his seat by his wife. As the ceremony continued and the vows were read, before Maeve could be heard saying, "I do," her head turned towards the headmaster's tower once more. I could feel us make eye contact once more, and though I knew she could not see me, I nodded in approval. I saw the smile grow on her face, as if she could feel all the approval she needed, and whipped her head back towards Draco before shouting, "I do!" at him. Dumbledore got a chuckle out of that. He was right. She is a Snape and I was grateful for that. I would change nothing of my life. Except one thing.

I, Severus Snape, would do anything to have a chance of walking her down.


End file.
